Issue no. 18 - April 2014

CHAMPIONS OF THE “MODERN MANNER” The exhibit at Palazzo Strozzi “ and . Diverging Paths of ”, points out the different vocations of the two great artist of the , both trained under .

Palazzo Strozzi will be hosting from March 8 to July 20, 2014 a major exhibition entitled Pontormo and Rosso Fiorentino. Diverging Paths of Mannerism. The exhibit is devoted to these two painters, the most original and unconventional adepts of the innovative interpretive motif in the season of the Italian Cinquecento named “modern manner” by Vasari.

Pontormo and Rosso Fiorentino both were born in 1494; Pontormo in and Rosso in nearby Empoli, Tuscany. They trained under Andrea del Sarto. Despite their similarities, the two artists, as the title of the exhibition suggests, exhibited strongly independent artistic approaches. They were “twins”, but hardly identical.

An abridgement of the article “I campioni della “maniera moderna” by Antonio Natali - Il Giornale degli no. 59, April 2014.

Issue no. 18 -April 2014

PONTORMO ACCORDING TO BILL VIOLA

The exhibit at Palazzo Strozzi includes American artist Bill Viola’s video installation “The Greeting”, a intensely poetic interpretation of The Visitation by Jacopo Carrucci

Through video art and the technique of slow motion, Bill Viola’s richly poetic vision of Pontormo’s painting “Visitazione” brings to the fore the happiness of the two women at their coming together, representing with the same—yet different—poetic sensitivity, the vibrancy achieved by Pontormo, but with a vital, so to speak carnal immediacy of the sense of life, “translated” into the here-and- now of the present.

Gone are the veils from the youthful woman who runs to greet the other with unconcealed joy, sharing the feminine complicity that cancels all differences in age and status. Here, being a woman holds the stage in itself; the gaze is direct, with no miracles or secrets hovering about. The miracle is life itself, evident in the rounded body of a nimble young Mary.

An abridgement of the article “Il Pontormo secondo Bill Viola” by Annamaria Piccinini - Il Giornale degli Uffizi no. 59, April 2014.

Issue no. 18 -April 2014

HISTORY, TRADITION, AND CRITICISM

A GDSU exhibit traces the historical steps of the collection during the first internationalisation (1848-1918) through a focused selection of drawings and prints.

Although the reputation of the Uffizi’s Gabinetto Disegni e Stampe (Department of Prints and Drawings) is primarily based on its collection of ancient authors, it has much to offer from subsequent epochs as well. A case in point is the GDSU’s upcoming exhibition, curated by Marzia Faietti, Miriam Fileti Mazza, and Giorgio Marini, which will focus on prints and drawings of Italian and international figures active in the period from the mid-19th century to the First World War (1848-1918). The opening will coincide with the publication, promoted jointly with the Scuola Normale Superiore, of the latest volume of the collection “Inventario Generale delle Stampe”: Storia di una collezione. I disegni e le stampe degli Uffizi dal periodo napoleonico al primo conflitto mondiale (History of a Collection: Drawings and Prints in the Uffizi from the Napoleonic Era to the First World War), Firenze, Olschki, 2014. This publication concludes the tracing of the events that shaped the GDSU from the period of Cardinal Leopoldo de’ Medici to the beginning of the 20th century.

An abridgement of the article “Storia, tradizione e critica” by Marzia Faietti - Il Giornale degli Uffizi no. 59, April 2014.

Issue no. 18 - April 2014

THE FEATS OF HANNIBAL

Restoration of The Stripping of the Corpses after the Battle of Cannae, one of a 16th-century series of tapestries woven in Brussels; Cornelis de Ronde created it no later than 1568.

The Flemish tapestry showing The Stripping of the Corpses after the Battle of Cannae, put on display following a meticulous restoration carried out by the Opera Laboratori Fiorentini, is one of a series of three, preserved in Florence, celebrating the feats of Hannibal. They probably entered the Medici collection through the inheritance left by Caterina de’ Medici, Queen of , to her niece Christina of Lorraine, who married Ferdinando I de’ Medici.

The three Florentine tapestries, together with the six preserved in the Bayerisches Nationalmuseum in Munich, belong to the History of Hannibal series woven by Brussels tapestry-maker Cornelis de Ronde no later than 1568, the date written on the tablet held by the figure representing the allegory of Mathematics in the restored tapestry. For the episodes he portrayed, de Ronde drew on Livy’s account of the Second Punic War in his Ab Urbe Condita.

In the central scene of the tapestry on display, the Carthaginians are shown despoiling the bodies of the Romans after the battle of Cannae, while in the background soldiers are loading plunder onto carts surrounding the encampment. In the foreground on the right, a kneeling soldier is offering to Hannibal and his commanders the most precious booty, which includes the gold rings belonging to the Roman equites sent to Carthage, according to Livy, as proof of the defeat suffered by Rome.

An abridgement of the article “Le imprese di Annibale” by Lucia Meoni - Il Giornale degli Uffizi no. 59, April 2014.

Issue no. 18 - April 2014

LIFE AT THE UFFIZI

‘LA CITTÀ DEGLI UFFIZI’: THREE NEW EXHIBITS Eccentric Renaissances: Dosso Dossi in the Castello del Buonconsiglio, in Trento (11 July - 2 November), curated by Vincenzo Farinella, offers the opportunity to admire the halls frescoed by Dosso and Battista Dossi, which represent an impressive anthology of the Este Court’s great painter, revealed in greater detail now by the discovery of new documents and unpublished works.

In the Halls of the Grand Duke, From the Uffizi to Arezzo: Selected Works from the Grand-Ducal Collection, in the Casa Museo di Ivan Bruschi in Arezzo (24 June - 5 October), is curated by Carlo Sisi, who selected paintings in the Uffizi with genres including interiors, still lifes, and portraits.

Pratovecchio’s Teatro degli Antei (15 June - 19 October) will host the exhibit Jacopo del Casentino and Painting in Pratovecchio in the Century of Giotto, curated by Daniela Parenti, which takes advantage of the sole work autographed by Casentino, preserved in the Uffizi, to explore a comparison with contemporaneous painters and the extraordinarily rich local art world.

LEONARDO, MEMORIES OF MASTERPIECES Exhibited in the Uffizi Hall of Geographical Maps, until 29 June, four works in the Galleria collection that are copies or derivations of creations by Leonardo. Together with Leda with the Swan and The Virgin and Child with St. Anne, two panels recall the struggle for the banner pictured in Leonardo’s mural of the Battle of Anghiari, commissioned in 1503 for the hall of the Maggior Consiglio in the Palazzo della Signoria. A comparison of these two 16th-century copies of the Battle is of significant interest. One is known as the Doria Panel, after the illustrious Genoese Doria family that owned it at least from the 18th century. This masterpiece was illegally moved out of , then returned in 2012, as a donation by the Fuji Art Museum of Tokyo. It was recently examined and restored by experts from the Opificio delle Pietre Dure. The Opificio management will present the results during a one-day workshop on 27 May.